From Thanu

My story of how I came to communications is a simple one. I had always wanted tobe a writer and a journalist. Like many South Asian girls coming of age at thetime when Arundathi Roy's 'God of Small Things' and other political writingswere gaining prestige- it was like a sign, "Look, I can actually do this!" Italso became a feasible money-making dream in the eyes of my parents, whose rangeof choices of what their children could be (doctors and engineers) expanded to"Well I suppose you can be a writer if you are EXACTLY like Arundathi Roy andtherefore make money like her."I helped run my high school newspaper, and wrote small articles for the BangkokPost and other such city newspapers in Bangkok, Thailand (where I grew up.) Iwas always unsatisfied and upset by the ways in which editors would edit downone's story, sometimes changing the meaning all together.When I got to college... I took a class called "The Culture of Imperialism"which was my first introduction to postcolonial studies and political economy.It changed how I viewed my world, and for the first time I understood the realways in which colonialism had touched every aspect of my life- from the strangephenomenon of being taught by American teachers in an international school inThailand (all of whom were paid more than local teachers), to the ways in whichall of us Asian students strived to 'Americanize'. My second semester atHampshire College, a friend from UMass told me to come to a class being taughtin the communications department. The class was called, "Global Media and SocialChange" and was taught by Paula Chakravartty. That class really made everythingclick for me. I appreciated studying media in a larger context, understandingthe connections between political economy, history, and the media. I feltempowered and felt that I was gaining a sense of self, and therefore anunderstanding of the world and how it is that I wanted to change it. I liked theinterdisciplinary nature of communications- I felt I wasn't limited. My dreamwidened from just being a journalist/writer, to dabbling in film/video and newmedia, blogging, etc.I study communications because it does not limit me.-- Thanu